| | | | |  | | By Eli Stokols, Lauren Egan and Ben Johansen | Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Eli | Email Lauren For three years, seemingly every time President JOE BIDEN went overseas the traveling press pool returned home with complaints, whether it be over a lack of access, poor planning or a general unresponsiveness to the concerns of reporters, photographers and producers on the ground. Over the last couple weeks, at least, things have changed. Biden’s back-to-back trips to France and Italy earlier this month offered the first road test for a revamped White House travel and press advance operation. And although these journeys were not without the usual complexities, a number of reporters upon returning home praised the officials charged with organizing their travel. “I feel like this new travel team has a ‘make it work’ attitude,” the Daily Mail’s EMILY GOODIN told West Wing Playbook. The White House press and advance teams ran into far more roadblocks in Italy, with officials there seeking to control and limit access to events as G7 host countries often do. And, according to several journalists on that trip, the team often plowed straight through them. Italian officials tried to prevent the entire 13-person U.S. press pool from accessing the welcome ceremony between Biden and Italian Prime Minister GIORGIA MELONI. “There was a bunch of yelling and back and forth,” one member of the pool recounted. Then, the volunteer advance person with the pool, JESS YUEN, flatly told the Italian officials that Biden wouldn’t get out of his car until the entire pool was in place. “The Italians very quickly backed down and we were all allowed in,” the pool member said. Several travelers credited the success of the trips to director of press advance, NIKKI JAWORSKI, who started on the job in February, as well as the national security council and White House press and communications teams, all of whom worked to make things happen. Texting back and forth in real time, they helped the press pool get a better spot to view Biden’s Marine One arrival at Borgo Egnazia, talked the pool through police checkpoints in time to attend Biden’s press conference with Ukraine President VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY and opened access to various G7 sessions that were initially closed. When Biden met with POPE FRANCIS on the sidelines of the summit, Jaworski pushed to ensure that one photographer, KEVIN LAMARQUE of Reuters, was in the room. The national security council’s press team, which is a big part of planning on all foreign trips, also sought briefings with several senior administration officials, including national security adviser JAKE SULLIVAN and senior adviser AMOS HOCHSTEIN, who held on-the-record briefings, and presidential counselor ANITA DUNN, who visited the press hold for a 45-minute off-the-record conversation. Biden’s five-day trip to France was simpler by comparison, mainly because several of the big D-Day anniversary events were organized by U.S. officials. But travel director KERI SIBLEY and her team worked to minimize operational challenges. Without adequate hotel capacity in Normandy, the U.S. press contingent had to take three-hour bus rides from Paris on back-to-back days to cover the president’s events. The White House arranged for multiple buses — with WiFi — so that reporters weren’t crammed together; and, when French police halted one of them at a checkpoint, Sibley got U.S. Secret Service agents to get their French counterparts to resolve the snafu. At Pointe du Hoc, where Biden delivered a second speech on the D-Day anniversary, French police again threatened to complicate press access when they demanded to do a security sweep of the location after the Secret Service had completed its own. That left a half dozen network correspondents and their crews uncertain about accessing the site in time to make the major morning shows. But with time ticking away, Sibley and her team told USSS agents to inform the French police that they had to go. The TV crews were able to pull off their live shots ahead of Biden’s arrival. Those transmissions were critical, not just for the correspondents and their networks, but an administration intent on ensuring that Biden’s D-Day speeches on democracy — elemental to the contrast he is trying to draw with former President DONALD TRUMP — broke through back at home. But for all their successful negotiations with foreign officials, these officials had no ability to change the one aspect of the trip that remained a disappointment to the traveling press: Biden’s own refusal to hold a full press conference. After being told the president would not be doing a press conference in France because he planned to hold one in Italy just days later, members of the press were frustrated to find out that Biden was only doing a “two by two” with Zelensky at the G7 — taking questions from two U.S. reporters and two others from Ukraine. MESSAGE US — Are you senior adviser to the first lady ANTHONY BERNAL? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! 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| | THE KITCHEN SINK STRATEGY: In recent days, the Biden campaign has cranked up the heat on Donald Trump. But Biden’s not alone in hoping to sway undecideds with dire warnings about an anti-democratic, nativist takeover. Other embattled incumbents in Europe are also resorting to slashing attacks against their opponents, telling voters in dystopian terms how bad things could get if their challengers win. As Eli, GIORGIO LEALI, JOHN JOHNSTON and ELENA SCHNEIDER report, these caustic campaigns reflect a political atmosphere defined by frustration and fear. In France and the U.S., they’re a response to extreme far-right candidates — but also a signal of desperation from unpopular leaders determined to break through before it’s too late. THREE ELECTION LAWYERS WALK INTO A BAR: Tuesday night’s book party for BOB BAUER, the president’s outside counsel, brought together quite a group of high-powered political lawyers and administration officials. Among the attendees: Biden’s former White House counsel DANA REMUS, former Obama solicitor general DON VERRILLI and longtime Republican election lawyer BEN GINSBERG. Historian JON MEACHAM, who wrote the forward to Bauer’s book, spoke briefly via Zoom from Nashville. Anita Dunn, Bauer’s wife, kept a close eye on their five-year-old granddaughter JOSEPHINE, who was marching around the room with copies of the book while others spoke. WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU TO READ: This piece by Reuters’ RICH MCKAY, who reports that Treasury Secretary JANET YELLEN defended President Biden’s increased tariffs on certain Chinese goods as highly strategic. In Atlanta on Thursday, Yellen said the tariffs are aimed at protecting electric vehicles, solar energy products and semiconductors from an excess Chinese capacity created by Beijing’s over-investment. She added that Donald Trump’s Chinese tariffs would be much broader and raise costs for consumers. Senior deputy press secretary ANDREW BATES shared the piece on X. A close second for this section would be KENDRICK LAMAR’s “Pop Out” concert in Los Angeles Wednesday — the first live performance of “Not Like Us” since his salvo with DRAKE began. Biden campaign director of rapid response AMMAR MOUSSA was very much locked in. WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: This piece by NYT’s RUTH IGIELNIK, who reports that Biden’s current single-digit lead among women is the weakest a Democrat has had since 2004 — a key indicator of how tight the race is. According to an average of more than 30 polls conducted over the last six months, Biden’s lead with women is about eight percentage points — down from a 13-point advantage four years ago. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s support among men has recovered since the 2020 election and is back to the double-digit lead he had in 2016.
| | | | A FLORIDA MAN’S PLAN: BARRY GOLSON, a veteran journalist who served as the executive editor of Playboy Magazine for 12 years, has a plan for Biden to win Florida. But he believes that it will require a WINSTON CHURCHILL-circa-1940 effort. A now-guest columnist at the Tampa Bay Times, Golson argued on Thursday that Florida Democrats “need a second Dunkirk” to get the state in Biden’s column. “We need to get off the beaches, into our vessels and vehicles, and spend the next four months persuading,” Golson writes. “We need a second Dunkirk, a volunteer force of patriotic regular folks to raise our side’s turnout. Just in my age group alone, a swing of a couple of percentage points could turn the tide of battle. In the other age groups, with lazier voting habits, but more energy, the sky’s the limit.” As Biden is prone to say: “We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end of the lines at Disney. We shall fight in Boca, we shall fight on the gulf and the Miami clubs.” GOOD NEWS FOR INCUMBENTS – JUST NOT THAT ONE: Democratic candidates have been doing surprisingly well in special elections. And in many polls, vulnerable Senate incumbents are running ahead of their GOP opponents in key battlegrounds. But as our LISA KASHINSKY, MADISON FERNANDEZ and MIA MCCARTHY report, the same cannot be said for the president. It’s clear that the party's down-ballot successes are not translating to the top of the ticket yet, as Biden trails Donald Trump in many key states and his job approval remains underwater. “Democrats are enthusiastic about trying to win the Senate and trying to win the House,” said NEIL OXMAN, a Pennsylvania-based Democratic strategist. And they’re “not enthusiastic about Biden’s reelection,” he said. “Period.” BACK OF THE NET: The Biden campaign is stepping up its Latino outreach efforts, airing a new ad in battleground states during the Copa América soccer tournament, which starts in the U.S. on Thursday night, NBC’s MONICA ALBA reports. The 30-second spot — titled “Gooaalll!” — will run in swing states that are hosting matches over the next month, like Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Florida and North Carolina. “Four years ago, we were shut down. Stadiums were empty. Trump failed us,” the narrator begins the ad, showing vacant sporting arenas during the pandemic, when Trump was president. “But then Joe Biden took over. He reopened the country and got us back on track.”
| | PERSONNEL MOVES: REGINALD BELON is now a public affairs specialist at the Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh, our ZACH WARMBRODT and DANIEL LIPPMAN have learned. He most recently was special adviser to the under secretary of the Minority Business Development Agency at the Department of Commerce. — ALICE LIN is now deputy assistant secretary for legislative affairs for tax and budget at the Treasury Department, Lippman has also learned. She most recently was senior tax policy adviser for the Senate Finance Committee. — ANTONIO WHITE has been named director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency's Office of Congressional Affairs and Communications, director SANDRA L. THOMPSON announced in a press release on Thursday.
| | QUICKLY TO KYIV: The Biden administration is moving Ukraine ahead of other U.S.-allies who were slated to receive air defense missiles — part of its effort to rush urgently needed weapons to Kyiv, our LARA SELIGMAN reports. The U.S. will “reprioritize” the deliveries of Patriots and National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems missiles planned for a group of other countries so that the munitions coming off the production line will instead go to Ukraine, National Security Council spokesperson JOHN KIRBY announced Thursday. Ukraine will begin seeing the missiles, designed by Lockheed Martin and RTX, this summer. REAL SEC-GENS WEAR ORANJE: MARK RUTTE, the longtime Netherlands prime minister, will take over from JENS STOLTENBERG as NATO secretary general after Romanian President KLAUS IOHANNIS withdrew from the race Thursday, our STUART LAU reports. Rutte will take NATO’s reins at a critical time: Donald Trump, a long time critic, could soon be back in power. Biden’s backing was key for Rutte in winning over the rest of the alliance, but some think his ascension stems from his reputation as “the Trump whisperer” and an effort to prepare for what could be a bumpy road ahead.
| | | | Despite fentanyl crackdown, Chinese sellers are open for business (WaPo’s Cate Cadell and Lily Kuo) Immigration fears are pushing centrists to the right in the US and Europe (POLITICO’s James Angelos, Myah Ward and Emily Schultheis) Biden Is Giving Red Districts an Inconvenient Gift: Green Jobs (Bloomberg’s Liam Denning, Jeff Davies, Elaine He, Carolyn Silverman and Taylor Tyson)
| | In the 1951 film “Bedtime for Bonzo” — which JOHNNY CARSON called a “favorite of old movie buffs and Democrats" — Reagan was nearly strangled by PEGGY, the chimpanzee that played BONZO and starred alongside our 40th president. “Natural inquisitiveness got the better of her” one day on set, according to Mental Floss. “Spying Reagan’s necktie, she grabbed it with both hands and began to pull. Startled, the actor tried to back away, but the harder he resisted, the harder she pulled, nearly suffocating our fortieth president in the process.” A CALL OUT! Do you think you have a harder trivia question? Send us your best one about the presidents, with a citation or sourcing, and we may feature it! Edited by Sam Stein and Rishika Dugyala.
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